Elon Musk’s X Corp has filed an antitrust lawsuit towards dozens of music publishers – plus the Nationwide Music Publishers’ Affiliation (NMPA) – accusing them of colluding to power the social media platform into taking industrywide licenses at “supracompetitive charges”.
On the coronary heart of the grievance: an allegation that the NMPA coordinated a marketing campaign to inundate X with DMCA takedown notices on behalf of publishers – over 200,000 posts focused within the first yr alone, and practically 500,000 because the main publishers joined the hassle in 2023.
X claims this marketing campaign was designed to unfairly strain the platform into licensing offers, fairly than to handle professional copyright issues.
A prediction: the music {industry} gamers concerned on this swimsuit could quickly level to each Meta/Instagram and YouTube, the place related widespread takedown requests have occurred previously – however in the end led to harmonious licensing agreements.
YouTube has stated it paid music {industry} rightsholders over USD $8 billion within the yr to finish of June 2025. Round 30% of that cash is anticipated to have been generated by adverts on user-generated content material movies that comprise music – with the right rightsholders detected by the platform’s Content material ID expertise.
X Corp’s 53-page grievance, filed on Friday (January 9) within the US District Courtroom for the Northern District of Texas and obtained by MBW, names the NMPA together with what the submitting describes as “18 Music Publishers and their associates” as defendants.
X alleges that these publishers “colluded by way of NMPA in a concerted refusal to take care of X independently” and that “the item of this scheme [was] to coerce X into taking licenses to musical works from the {industry} as a complete, denying X the good thing about competitors between music publishers”.
The grievance claims this alleged collusion “is in step with NMPA President and CEO David Israelite‘s admonition that the music-publishing {industry} ought to ‘work collectively to increase the pie,’ and never activate each other to try to get an even bigger piece of the pie.’”
On the heart of X’s allegations is a claimed October 2021 electronic mail from Israelite to X, despatched on behalf of “all music publishers”.
In line with the grievance, Israelite “threatened that NMPA would quickly launch ‘a large program’ to inundate X with DMCA takedown notices ‘on a scale bigger than any earlier effort in DMCA historical past’”.
X claims that Israelite warned this system would hurt X by “rapidly flip[ing] lots of [X’s] hottest customers into repeat infringers,” which might require X to deplatform them beneath its insurance policies.
The grievance alleges that Israelite made clear that “X might make this all go away—for a value”.
In line with X: “Mr. Israelite defined that X might keep away from a coordinated takedown-notice barrage if it agreed to do ‘what many different social media corporations have finished’ and ‘develop a partnership’ with NMPA and the Music Publishers to license their musical compositions.”
Normal observe or collusion?
What X characterizes as anticompetitive collusion, music publishers would argue is customary {industry} observe.
For one factor, the licensing preparations that X’s lawsuit assaults are the identical frameworks in place with just about each different main social media platform.
As X’s personal grievance acknowledges, YouTube, Fb, Instagram, TikTok, Snap, Twitch, and Roblox have all entered into licensing agreements with music publishers, in lots of circumstances following negotiations coordinated by way of the NMPA.
Publishers would subsequently doubtless argue that X is just not a sufferer of collusion – however fairly an outlier that has refused to pay for music whereas its rivals have finished so.
“We allege that X has engaged in copyright infringement for years, and its meritless lawsuit is a nasty religion effort to distract from publishers’ and songwriters’ professional proper to implement towards X’s unlawful use of their songs.”
David Israelite, NMPA
Certainly, X’s lawsuit instantly cites a public tweet from David Israelite to Elon Musk in April 2022, after information broke that Musk would purchase Twitter: “@elonmusk Please repair the Twitter coverage of not paying songwriters for his or her contribution to the platform. All different main social media corporations have already finished the identical.”
Responding to X’s antitrust lawsuit, NMPA President and CEO David Israelite stated in an announcement to media: “X/Twitter is the one main social media firm that doesn’t license the songs on its platform.
“We allege that X has engaged in copyright infringement for years, and its meritless lawsuit is a nasty religion effort to distract from publishers’ and songwriters’ professional proper to implement towards X’s unlawful use of their songs.”
X brings its claims beneath Part 1 and Part 2 of the Sherman Act, alleging illegal settlement in restraint of commerce, conspiracy to monopolize, monopolization, and tried monopolization.
The grievance alleges that the music publishers “account for over 90%” of the marketplace for licenses to copyrighted musical compositions in the US.
X is looking for a everlasting injunction, treble damages, punitive damages, prices, and attorneys’ charges.
Over 200,000 posts focused in first yr
In line with the lawsuit, the NMPA started bombarding X with takedown notices “just about each single week” beginning in December 2021.
“Within the first yr alone, these takedown notices recognized over 200,000 X posts,” the grievance states, detailing weekly notices starting from 84 pages to over 1,100 pages every.
The grievance provides: “And because the scheme started, the takedown notices have brought about X to droop greater than 50,000 customers due to claims of copyright infringement.”
X alleges that “these notices included allegedly infringing materials from a few of X’s prime customers with tens of millions of followers,” together with “creators like Logan Paul, the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs and the Detroit Lions soccer groups, bands Linkin Park and BTS, and media shops like E! Information, ESPN FC, and Golf Digest“.
The grievance claims that Common, Sony, and Warner Chappell initially “declined to take part within the conspiracy orchestrated by NMPA and the remaining Music Publishers.”
The lawsuit quotes an alleged Could 2022 electronic mail from a Warner Chappell Senior Vice President: “[We’ve] chosen to not be concerned in any NMPA takedown actions thus far as we’ve got been hopeful that [X] would have interaction with us as they develop their music technique, however we’re getting common inquiries from senior administration about [X’s] licensing standing.”
In line with the grievance, by early 2023, “when not one of the Majors had secured a musical-composition license settlement, they every joined the conspiracy to extract industrywide licenses.”
X claims that because the majors joined, “NMPA has despatched 1000’s of pages of takedown notices, figuring out practically 500,000 posts allegedly infringing on copyrights of the Majors, in addition to the Non-Majors.”
Allegations of ‘baseless’ takedowns
X argues that lots of the NMPA’s takedown notices focused content material that was not topic to a professional declare of infringement, describing the marketing campaign as “pretext” for an “extortionate” scheme.
It provides: “Not solely have NMPA’s takedown notices claimed content material just like that posted by NMPA executives and legal professionals was infringing, however they’ve additionally compelled X to take away posts that aren’t topic to copyright safety.”
X cites examples together with “a video of a highschool’s sports-award ceremony” the place “music performs briefly” till “the athlete takes the award and walks off the stage.”
The grievance states: “Though there is no such thing as a affordable foundation for censoring this video targeted on a highschool athlete’s achievement primarily based on the de minimis, non-commercial use of background music within the video, X needed to take it down due to Defendants’ scheme.”
The lawsuit means that the alleged conspiracy towards X follows a “broader playbook” that publishers and the NMPA have leveled towards different platforms, together with Twitch, Roblox, Peloton, and Snap.
Curiously, the proof X cites for the NMPA’s “extortionate” playbook is a collection of negotiations… that resulted in what seem like amicable licensing agreements.
Concerning Twitch, X’s grievance states that round Could 2020, Amazon‘s livestreaming service “acquired a sudden inflow of DMCA takedown notices from NMPA on behalf of music publishers”.
The lawsuit notes that the Twitch fallout resulted in late September 2021 when the platform “introduced a deal with NMPA to ‘construct productive partnerships between the service and music publishers’”.
“Curiously, the proof X cites for the NMPA’s “extortionate” playbook is a collection of negotiations… that resulted in what seem like amicable licensing agreements.”
Equally, the grievance notes that the NMPA and music publishers sued Roblox in June 2021, which “resulted in September 2021, when Roblox and NMPA settled the claims towards Roblox and arrange ‘an industry-wide opt-in open to all eligible NMPA publishers’ to barter go-forward music-licensing offers.”
The NMPA introduced on the time that the settlement “expands Roblox’s current relationships with main publishers to the complete publishing {industry}.”
In different phrases, each Twitch and Roblox now pay (one thing) for music.
X argues that the choice to coordinate takedowns by way of the NMPA fairly than individually “makes financial sense provided that the target is to facilitate coordination amongst competing Music Publishers and goal X’s hottest customers in order to use most strain to X to barter with them collectively”.
Many within the music enterprise would argue that an industry-wide opt-in settlement for publishing licenses truly makes financial sense for one more motive: it’s the quickest and best route for social media websites with a whole lot of tens of millions of customers to achieve authorized clearance for music content material their viewers is prone to add.
Quite a few music publishers, together with Sony Music Publishing, Common Music Publishing Group, and Warner Chappell Music, sued X Corp in June 2023, alleging “rampant infringement of copyrighted music” on X.
The preliminary grievance sought greater than USD $250 million in damages for about 1,700 works.
In June 2025, the music publishers and X had been granted a 90-day pause to their copyright lawsuit for “good religion negotiations” to attempt to settle out of courtroom.
A November 25 replace to the courtroom acknowledged that the events had “made very substantial progress towards settlement and labored on a written settlement settlement.”
X’s submitting of this antitrust lawsuit clearly suggests these settlement discussions didn’t lead to an settlement, regardless of this obvious progress.Music Enterprise Worldwide
